A Tale of the Jewels in the Park By Benjamín Gavarre

 

A Tale of the Jewels in the Park

By Benjamín Gavarre

There was once, in a park so large that it seemed a small jungle within an immense city, a gold Watch and a diamond Earring who were living a terrible misadventure. They had not been born there, of course. Both had known a comfortable and secure life with humans, but fate, which is at times abrupt and careless, had thrown them into the very same tangle of a myrtle hedge.

The Watch was a serious gentleman of great weight. His entire life had been based on Order and Time. He measured the seconds with an impeccable gravity and believed firmly in loyalty and well-executed plans.

The Earring, for his part, was a free spirit and a bit of a braggart. He had never had a pair, and this had given him an air of uniqueness of which he was very proud. His philosophy was that of Shine and the Moment.

Trapped as they were between the leaves and the damp earth, they spent the hours arguing.

"My owner, a good man, must already be organizing an expedition for my rescue," the Watch would say, his deep voice sounding like a pendulum. "It is a matter of time. Two hundred and eighty-eight thousand ticks, to be exact."

"How boring!" the Earring would reply, his diamond twinkling with an impatient gesture. "Mine, who is a young soul, has surely forgotten me by now. The world is full of things that shine! One must know how to move on."

And so the days passed. Above them, the world of humans continued its indifferent course. They watched the feet of the runners pass like swift monsters in colorful shoes, and their hearts of metal would shrink with hope and disappointment. They were like two abandoned puppies watching people from behind a fence, waiting for a familiar face to stop.

Sometimes, despair would play tricks on their minds. The Watch, in a moment of weakness, believed he saw a man in the distance with the same upright posture as his owner. In his imagination, he freed himself from the branches and rolled across the grass, shouting in a voice no one could hear, "Sir, wait! Your wrist misses me!" But the man continued on his way, and the Watch returned to his stillness, feeling the cold of reality.

The Earring, so as not to be bored, would imagine the most delicious delicacies he had ever seen. "A pizza!" he would say to himself. "I would eat an entire pizza right now, with its hot cheese and its crispy crust." And in his fantasy, he would roll in a sea of tomato sauce, until he came to his senses and could only taste the bitter earth.

One day, a ray of sun, which is a great accomplice to things that shine, filtered through the leaves and struck the Earring's diamond head-on. The small jewel cast a glint of pure light, a cry for help as white and powerful as a star. "Now!" he thought with all his might. "Someone look!"

But humans, as is well known, walk with their gaze lost in their own thoughts, and no one saw the small signal.

"It is useless," said the Watch with a deep sadness. "This jungle does not want us to be found."

It was then that the real danger arrived. A large man, with strong and calloused hands, approached the hedge with pruning shears that opened and closed like the jaws of a steel animal. It was the Gardener. To the two jewels, he was a giant who had come to destroy their small world. The branches began to fall around them.

"This is the end!" the Watch declared. "We will end up in a bag with the dry leaves. The dishonor!"

But amid the crunching of the branches, the sun shone upon the Earring once more. The Gardener stopped. He squinted and saw the small point of light.

"Well now..." he said to himself. "What's that."

He reached his hand carefully into the foliage. The Earring's metal heart beat wildly. He was going to be saved, but his companion, the heavy and honorable Watch, would remain hidden forever. And in that instant, the little Earring understood a truth greater than his own pride: that solitude, even in freedom, was a very poor fate.

Just as the man's fingers were about to touch him, the Earring let himself fall. He rolled down a leaf and struck his companion with a resounding "clink." The Gardener, guided by the sound, looked down and saw not only the diamond, but the perfect, golden circle of the Watch. His eyes opened with an astonishment he rarely felt.

He picked them both up and cradled them in the palm of his hand. They were heavy, they were real. And in his mind, he did not see money, but the face of his wife when he would gift her the new stove she wanted so badly. He saw his boy, Marco, who was twenty now and to whom that single earring would look just right. "Who would have thought," he thought with a smile, "that in an ordinary hedge I would find an unexpected legacy for my son."

And that is how the Watch and the Earring, who had been the jewels of rich men, became the treasure of a good man. They understood that their true value was not in the wrist or the ear that wore them, but in the joy they could bring together. And in the warm, grateful hand of the Gardener, for the first time, they found peace, without time or shine, simply existing, one beside the other.